CASE STUDY: CULTURE
February 27, 2014
Hugo Harmens, Jason Leung
OVERVIEW: CHAPTERS 8–11

Culture in Songbirds and its Contribution to the
Evolution of New Species


When does Psychology Drive Culture?


Olivier Morin
Quantifying the Importance of Motifs on Attic
Figure-Painted Pottery


Darren E. Irwin
Peter Schauer
Agents, Intelligence, and Social Atoms

Alex Bentley, Paul Ormerod
1
WHAT IS CULTURE?
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
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“The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of
human beings and transmitted from one generation to
another.” – Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary,
second edition. 1999. Random House: New York.
“The total set of beliefs, values, customs, and behavior
patterns that characterizes a human population; the noninstinctive manner in which humans interact with or
manipulate their environment.” – Academic Press Dictionary
of Science and Technology. 1992. Academic Press: San Diego,
California.
“The customs, civilization, and achievements of a particular
time or people.” – The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus,
American Edition. 1996. Oxford University Press: New York.
“The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts,
beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work
and thought.” – www.thefreedictionary.com
2
WHAT IS CULTURE?
Phenomenon originally conceived by humans to
be unique to humans
 A desire to keep humans separate from other
species?
 Problematic:

Evidence of culture-like behaviour in animals
 Being species-specific can prevent us from making
progress in understanding the origins and evolution
of culture

3
WHAT IS CULTURE?

What if we take out the words human or people?
cd
CULTURE:
Socially learned behaviour that can
grow and change through time
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4
(Irwin 2013)
GENES AND MEMES
Question of Nature vs. Nurture
 Look to the natural world for clues
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Example: Birdsong
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Study of greenish warbler species
Variation influenced by genes and learning
Observations:
Songs vary geographically
 Gradual differences in structure, syntax
 Female preference for complex songs

5
GENES AND MEMES

Result: two non-interbreeding species in Siberia
Different song structures, syntax
 Genetic pre-disposition to sing their species’ song structure
 Able to learn the other species’ song syntax

WESTERN BRANCH:
longer song units,
but greater
repetition
EASTERN BRANCH:
shorter song units,
but greater
repertoire
6
(Irwin 2013)
GENE-CULTURE CO-EVOLUTION
Sexual selection drives genes and memes to evolve
 Change in memes cause selection on genes
 Change in genes cause selection on memes

7
(Irwin 2013)
GENE-CULTURE CO-EVOLUTION
Culture is not simply that which is not genetic
 One system of GENE-CULTURE CO-EVOLUTION

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By studying such behaviour in animals, we can
gain new insights to understanding of our own
cultural phenomena
8
UNIVERSAL PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONSTRAINTS
Parallels in human cultures?
 Are there human species-wide cultural traits?
 Is culture the result of:

Individuals?
 Society?

[General psychological constraints] seem to
influence culture in a way that is both uniform
and weak. When one is in the business of
explaining contrasts between individuals or
societies, this makes them twice irrelevant.
—Morin 2013
9
UNIVERSAL PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONSTRAINTS

Cultural Epidemiology:
Culture… is a distribution of representations
within a population. Being a statistical
abstraction, this distribution lacks essence and
causal powers. — Morin 2013 (emphasis added)
Why?
 Allows for the study of transmission of culture
 CULTURAL TRANSMISSION CHAINS
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10
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION CHAINS
Long vs. Short: number of individuals involved
 Broad vs. Narrow: impact each individual has
 Through time or space
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Universal traits: cultural objects that persist in
long and narrow chains
11
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION CHAINS

Problem of scale
Local impacts are also important to culture
 Cannot be ignored
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Not all cultural things come from long/narrow chains
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Culture is not a mere reflection of the human mind
“Windows to the Human Mind”:
Consistent and reliable indicators
 Underlying mental mechanisms

12
CULTURE AS A COLLECTIVE WHOLE
So many people
 So many times and places
 When an idea travels through thousands of heads

Millions of psychological filters
 Idiosyncrasies pull in all directions
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Central Limit Theorem
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Large sample size
averaging effect
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Any remaining trend must be universal human trait
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Suggests statistical approach
13
CULTURE AS A COLLECTIVE WHOLE
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Immediate level:
Numerical analysis can reveal hidden trends
 i.e., Trends not obvious in traditional approaches to
cultural study
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Greek pottery and Quantification

Peter Schauer (2013)
14
GREEK POTTERY AND QUANTIFICATION
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Through quantification:
Assess existing scholarly claims about motif
importance
 Make new observations of existing data

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Source material: Beazley archive
75,451 pieces between 650–300 BC
 Identified and catalogued manually by experts
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Preparing Beazley database for analysis
15
QUANTIFYING ART
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
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BOREAS motif clearly gains biggest share in the
period 500–450 BC, when motifs already
appearing in previous time-steps are omitted
Not possible to support conclusion without prior
knowledge
PAN: increase in frequency supports Webster's
correlation, but greatest frequency in PAN
depictions occurred later
16
QUANTIFYING ART

NIKE's peak 475–425 BC previously unnoted

Warrants further investigation
17
(Schauer 2013)
BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS
Cultural importance cannot be inferred from
frequency alone
 Quantitative research can, in spite of this, show
other tendencies
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Starting points for further research
Perceived importance of works of art and
individual artists
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Frequency revealing hidden cultural trends
18
LARGE-SCALE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
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
What if we pretend culture is just an emergent
structure resulting from large-number statistics?
Complex phenomena from simple rules
Chess
 Fractals
 Differential equations
 DNA and amino acids

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Absence of (full) rationality
(image from Planet3.org)
19
LARGE-SCALE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
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Humans as Zero-Intelligence Particles
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We are not as smart as we think we are
Also not independent/isolated
 Cannot make optimum or rational decisions
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We do not have access to all information
Resources available
 Dimensions of human problems so large
 As if we had approximately zero intelligence
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20
LARGE-SCALE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Humans as Zero-Intelligence Particles
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Assume as little as possible
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To identify the most general characteristics of
collective human behaviour
Particles cannot:
Act with purpose or intent
 Learn
 Adapt based on previous outcomes
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21
(image from http://www.webgl.com/2012/02/webgl-demo-particles-morph/)
LARGE-SCALE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
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Adding intelligence
Non-random interactions
 Networks
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Adding copying
Trends and fashions
 Peer pressure
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Adding innovation
22
(image from http://www.webgl.com/2012/02/webgl-demo-particles-morph/)
LARGE-SCALE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Human decisions are social
Despite grandiose claims of re-inventing social
science (Barabási 2005), these models in
physics often fail to capture essential
elements of human behaviour.
—Bentley and Ormerod 2013
23
THESIS 1: “BORROWING”
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By “borrowing” methods from different
disciplines, we can build better models
Statistical methods are the best models we have
for studying large-scale phenomena
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Sophisticated means of dealing with complexity and
heterogeneity
No need to resort to simplified assumptions of
equilibrium or optimality
View of large-scale emergent effects (social physics)
through individual-scale behaviour (anthropology)
Insights into “tipping points” resulting from
nondescript individual interactions
24
THESIS 1: “BORROWING”
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By “borrowing” methods from different
disciplines, we can build better models
Models are improved by using more data points
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Everyday and unexceptional works are more
numerous and, hence, more representative
Study of culture as a collective WHOLE rather
than an isolated individual

Influences on/of artists can be clearer
25
THESIS 2: “MIXING”
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By “mixing” knowledge from different disciplines,
all will benefit
Disciplines will often encounter topics outside
their traditionally-defined limits
Collaboration will broaden applicability across
multiple diverse disciplines
26
THESIS 2: “MIXING”

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By “mixing” knowledge from different disciplines,
all will benefit
Offer new non-biased perspectives
Example: Physics and Anthropology
 Physics:

Can characterize a certain category of collective behaviour
 But flawed assumptions about human behaviour

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Anthropology:
Has a deep record of individual behaviour and its infinite
variability
 But may not see collective effects
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27
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
28
PURITY
On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.
29
xkcd by Randall Munroe, http://xkcd.com/435/
THE “SPECIAL” HUMANS
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Science is breaking down ways in which we had
previously thought we were “special”
Are we afraid our discipline(s) may also not be
“special”?
PURITY vs. conceptual blending (consilience) as
inherently human
PURITY vs. POLLUTION
30
THE “SPECIAL” HUMANS AND PURITY
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“Core disgust”
Humanities towards Sciences?
 Sciences towards Humanities?
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Objectivist approach without losing our
achievements

Do the humanists see the scientists’ striving for
“God’s eye view” inherently distorting and wrong?
31
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
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Is consilience a question of philosophy?
Do philosophical questions matter?
 “What is Truth?”
 Objectivism, post-modernism (v2.0)
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Vast majority of fields operate independent of
such questions
Anthropology, history, music, social science…
 Biology, engineering, meteorology, pharmacology…
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Why is there resistance?
32
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
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Fear of deprecation of one’s own discipline?
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Fear of unknowns outside one’s own discipline?
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Fear of untried methods?
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Purity of disciplines
False belief statistical models ignore the x% minority
Fear of results?
Zero-intelligence – we are not so smart after all
 Nor are we “special”

33
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
34
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
How?
 New attitudes toward education
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Current system designed in/for Industrial Age

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Practicality
Assembly line
Committee of Ten, 1892
35
Angus, D., and J. Mirel. 1999. The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995.
New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN 0807738425.
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE
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
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Current focus on STEM subjects
Why ingrain a divide between humanities and
sciences?
Could the desire to dichotomize knowledge be a
kink in our cultural transmission chain?
36
TOWARDS CONSILIENCE

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot, 2010
English
 Biology (HeLa cells)
 History (Civil Rights Movement)
 Ethics (issues of race and class)

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Complete integration of Knowledge
(practical issues aside)
 New Renaissance of Knowledge


But more importantly…
37
RECONCILIATION
38